


Wake; or, Doctor Snoke and the American Boy

by linguamortua



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Historical, M/M, Nightmares, Paranormal, Period Typical Attitudes, Physical Disability, Presumed Dead, Psychological Horror, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-03
Updated: 2017-09-21
Packaged: 2018-11-22 23:36:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11390769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linguamortua/pseuds/linguamortua
Summary: At the tail end of World War Two, young Armitage Hux leaves the stifling atmosphere of his parents' house and starts working for the strange, deformed Doctor Snoke. His work in Snoke's orbit brings him into contact with Ben, a mysterious servant with a gruesome, scarred face. At first Armitage is horrified by Snoke and Ben, but as time goes by he realises that he might be more like them than his own family...





	1. Chapter 1

The windows and door of the old stone house that the strange foreign doctor had recently purchased yawned wide in the dusk. Armitage stared up at them, and then became aware that he was staring, and rearranged his face into neutrality. The last thing to do when meeting a new employer was to gawk like a witless local farmboy. Armitage was local, but he was not a farmer, and neither was he stupid. In fact, he had been to university, although only for a year, which was accounted a very good education for a young man in his position.

He flexed his cold, stiff hand on his case, and set the case down, and then reached tremulously out to press the doorbell. It was nestled in the mouth of a small gargoyle, and a sudden fancy came upon him that it would bite off his fingertip. The thought made him recoil back, his new shoes scuffing on the dry leaves. The left one pinched horribly, even laced as loosely as possible. Trepidation swelled within him. He had considered getting off the bus early and going home, but jobs were hard to come by now that the men were back from the war.

The door creaked open.

A sullen boy put his face around the door. He was pale and dark-haired, and his beaky face was marred by a long, ugly scar. He wore black trousers and a black shirt, which hung from his hunched shoulders.

‘You the clerk?’ He was a Yank, Armitage realised, recognising the grating accent. He had not known what type of foreigner now inhabited the house.

‘Yes. I’m Armitage Hux.’ Armitage swallowed. ‘Are you Doctor Snoke?’

‘Nah,’ said the boy. ‘He’s inside.’ He retreated back into the dark, leaving the door open. Armitage went inside. The dusk of the street had been unnerving, but this was worse. Strange enough to be asked to meet an employer at night time. Stranger yet to walk into a dark house.

Immediately the smell of dust and old polish hit him. He could feel the dust, too, gritty under the soles of his shoes. Armitage closed the door, and then hurried to follow the odd servant as he creaked across the floorboards, towards a small wooden door. The intricacies of upper class life were not fully known to Armitage, but he was sure that no respectable servant left a guest to close the door. They passed through the door and down some perilously narrow stairs, into the basement level of the house. From the street level one could see barred-off windows half-sunk into the ground. The floor had once been servants’ quarters, Armitage thought; a long corridor marked with plain doors. Someone had laid down a shabby green runner, and it was flecked along the edges with flakes of peeled white paint. A single electric light flickered with an audible buzz.

Armitage realised that his hands were sweating with nerves, and the handle of his case felt slick on his palm. They stopped at a door and the case swung forward and hit the sullen boy in the leg. The boy did not react. He knocked on the door.

‘Come,’ said a voice from inside. When the boy shoved the door open, a little paint grated off and onto the tip of Armitage’s polished right shoe. He surreptitiously tried to rub it against the back of his trouser leg before walking into the room.

It was extremely warm inside despite the autumn chill. A fire was crackling in the small iron hearth and the room was carpeted in dark, thick red. A table stood in one corner with a large book open upon it, and pen and ink. There were no chairs. In the very centre of the room, a figure sat in a wheelchair, back turned towards the door.

‘This is the man, Doctor,’ said the servant in his drawling, American voice.

The wheelchair turned in place, and a thin, strange man swivelled into view. His skin was very grey and Armitage had to stifle a sound of horror when he saw that the foreign doctor was wholly lacking a nose. His dark eyes were very deep-set, and his thin hands clutched at a brown blanket draped about him like a robe. His feet Armitage could not see. Armitage was not unused to the sight of deformities. Many men did not look as they should now, after the war.

Armitage stammered the customary greeting. Doctor Snoke surveyed him as he stood in the middle of the carpet. In diorama, the three men stood or sat very still. Armitage wondered if he should say something more, but manners dictated that Doctor Snoke should break the silence. The man’s scrutiny prickled on Armitage’s skin and a line of sweat formed along his spine. The room was stifling.

‘Your writing sample was impressive,’ said the doctor eventually, his voice a dry creak. He gave a short cough. ‘The penmanship—excellent.’ His thin lips curled in a smile. Armitage tried to ignore the way it pulled at the wreckage of his nose. ‘You are just what is required.’ He nodded once, twice, and then made a gesture towards the door and turned his wheelchair back to the desk. Armitage did not move until the dour-faced boy tugged at his arm and drew him back out into the hall.

‘I—I’ve got the job, then?’ Armitage asked, his throat still very tight with nerves.

‘Yeah,’ the boy said, as if Armitage were slow. ‘Follow me.’

The American boy led Armitage through a warren of silent, dusty corridors. It was very late now and Armitage was hungry. As always, his foot hurt, and his knee, and between them they were conspiring to cause him pain in his lower back. He had eaten nothing since breakfast, and his bread and dripping had not lasted long. There had been a train—a long, cold wait at the station—and then a bus. That was why he was to stay here, in the old house. Room and board and five pounds a week. Of course his brother Harold had earned a sight more as a pilot, as Armitage’s mother liked to remind him, but then, his brother Harold was dead, as she also like to remind him, so Armitage could not complain too much about his lot. At any rate, the room alone was worth working for. Now he would not have to be at home. Now he would be away from his sobbing mother and his grim-faced father, and their constant disappointment in him.

The American boy stopped abruptly by a door that looked the same as any other. They were upstairs, two floors above the street. The house was narrow when viewed from the road, but stretched backwards a long way. With all its narrow corridors and identical doors, Armitage wondered how he would find his way around. The boy swung the door open with a long arm. Armitage was surprised when the hinges didn’t creak.

The room was dark and narrow, like the rest of the house, but it had a bed with a thick green blanket, and a washbasin, and on the table a metal cover suggested dinner. It was not filled up with Harold’s untouchable detritus; it would be Armitage’s alone. The boy stretched past Armitage to pull on the long light cord. A dim bulb came on and lifted the gloom by a fraction.

‘There’s food,’ grunted Armitage’s surly guide. ‘Breakfast in the kitchen at six.’

‘And the facilities…?’ Armitage hoped that he would not have to make some kind of crass elaboration. The boy jerked his thumb down the hallway to a little door with a white plaque: WC. Armitage turned to set his case down inside the room. When he turned back, the American boy was already disappearing around the corner. Somewhere out in the town, the church bells rang eight o’clock.

Armitage closed the door and mechanically removed his shoes, which were pinching, and his coat. His left foot was horribly cramped from the standing and the walking. He rubbed at the thickness of his ankle, the twisted arch and toes. The water in the basin was too cold to soak his foot in, but he washed his hands and then sat to his supper. When he lifted the lid, droplets of condensation trickled onto his shirt and the table, catching in ancient scratches and scuffs. A nursery sort of a table. There was bread and pea soup and some cold meat. The soup was thick and glutinous, although not inedible. It was still faintly warm. Wholesome but bland, the sort of thing his mother might make. Armitage wondered if the American boy had cooked it. He had seen or heard no sign of anyone else in the house.

In silence he ate, and in silence he unpacked his case and put on his striped pyjamas. There was nothing else to do. He had brought very little with him, not even a book—carrying the case was already hard on his leg, and he had not known whether he would get the job. He pulled back the blanket. And then he put himself to bed and lay staring at the ceiling in the thick, dusty silence of the house until, eventually, he slept.

 

* * *

 

Armitage sat in front of a thick stack of paper and a large, leatherbound book, and stared. He did not recognise the words. The words in the book were—not—words. The letters were all as they should be, but the language was not English, nor was it Latin or French or German, or indeed anything that he had ever seen. They were ugly words. Sounded out phonetically, they were harsh on the tongue. Someone, presumably Doctor Snoke, had hand-written them in an angular, spiky hand that looked very laboured. It was all very legible, but at the same time utterly obscure.

On Friday afternoon Armitage would be paid his five pounds for a week of clerk’s work. It was Monday morning. He had borrowed three shillings from his father yesterday for the journey, and received along with the coins the comment that it was more than he deserved, and was to be paid back directly the next weekend. So Armitage took up his pencil and ruler and began marking up some pages, taking refuge in familiarity. The taste of breakfast still clung to his tongue—stewed tea and sparse porridge. He ruled even lines, taking pleasure, as always, in creating order from nothing. Then he set the ruler aside, took up his fountain pen and meticulously filled the reservoir. A few gentle strokes on his square of scrap paper reassured him that the India ink was flowing properly, smooth and black.

He began to write. Slowly, at first, wary of making errors in transcription. Doctor Snoke was clearly an educated man, and a wealthy one. Armitage did not want to fail on his first day, with work so hard to come by. At least, for him.

Harold would have found it easier. But Harold had been a handsome, confident flyboy, and neither of his feet had been crippled. Nor had he possessed Armitage’s rather pale face, or his habit of slouching. A girl had once told Armitage that he had “a nasty, cold, suspicious face, like a murderer or something else horrid.” This after Armitage had tried to kiss her.

He realised he was writing with some savagery and paused. The old clock on the wall was probably slow, but about an hour had passed. Days upon days of copying would rapidly become interminable, at this rate. He already had the start of a headache. He wondered if this would be the shape of all his days.

Turning a new leaf of paper, he continued to copy. The instructions delivered in the American boy’s flat drawl had been simple enough. After breakfast he would sit here in the study, at the vast, heavy oak desk, surrounded by empty bookshelves. He would carefully copy into neat the notes in the ledger onto loose paper, and then file each numbered section separately. Meals, the boy had said, would be provided. Armitage wrote on.

He found himself feeling rather fearful in the deathly stillness of the house. He had felt so since arriving the previous evening and had started awake several times during the night. To distract himself, he wondered about Doctor Snoke and the American boy.

Was the boy Doctor Snoke’s son? The way that the doctor had all but ignored him suggested that he was not, although perhaps Americans were different. Perhaps it was money that compelled the boy to stay here in unnerving isolation with the strange and deformed old man. And yet the boy seemed young indeed to run a household and be so trusted—maybe no older than twenty. Surely he had fought in the war, with that great gash of a scar down his face.

What kind of doctor could Doctor Snoke be? What had brought him to a rural English town? Why was he so horribly maimed? And why was he employing Armitage, at a more than fair wage, to write out pages of something like code?

The Yanks, Armitage recalled, had allied with Britain in the war. And Doctor Snoke and the boy both sounded like the GIs who had been stationed not far outside town, near Mallenstowe. If he had had any suspicions, Armitage might have felt duty-bound to take the leather-bound book to the local constabulary.

With a start Armitage realised that he had begun to write his questions down on the paper in front of him. He looked guiltily at the glistening ink. Snatching up the page, he crumpled it into a ball and tossed it into the wicker bin by the desk. Just then the study door opened and the American boy came in. He carried a tray.

‘Lunch,’ he said, setting the tray down.

‘In here?’ Armitage asked. ‘Couldn’t I eat in the kitchen?’ Of course he would rather eat in the parlour, the dining room being inappropriate, but the relative familiarity of the kitchen would do.

‘Why?’

‘Well—can’t I at least go out for a smoke?’ Armitage actually smoked very little, but the family doctor had told him it would strengthen his weak lungs. Besides, he felt something like a prisoner and desired to see the sun, or the sky. The American boy shrugged.

‘I guess,’ he said eventually. Armitage stood and waiting until the boy led him out through the tradesman’s entrance. It was a cold, grey day. Armitage rolled himself a cigarette, lit it with a match and took a disinterested, shallow drag. He did not feel better for taking the air.

The American boy was poor company. He did not speak, or accept Armitage’s offer of a smoke. They stood almost touching in the doorway, huddled against the damp wind. The street was quiet and empty, although once a thin ginger cat slunk by with a cagey look at the two men. Armitage sucked hastily at his cigarette to finish it, and then ground the end out with his heel. Seeing it, the boy turned away, back towards the door, and Armitage followed him. The door slammed and the stale silence enveloped Armitage once again.

‘What’s your name, anyway?’ Armitage asked the American boy’s broad back.

‘Ben,’ said the boy, and then refused to speak further.

 

* * *

 

Armitage harboured no illusions about his relative value. There were very many young men who could write a decent hand and take a dictation, or put letters in the post reliably, or keep a simple ledger. And many of those young men had fought. In a small town, Armitage could not ever pretend that his crippled foot was evidence of great bravery or service. It shamed him that he had ever considered an act of deception in this way. That he would lapse in integrity. But Armitage knew, had always known, because he had been told, that he was a very petty creature.

As his parents had always been fond of telling him, Armitage was fortunate. Some families would have sent him away, or not wanted him. Some families would not have allowed him a year at university. (Harold’s cast-offs again, Armitage thought mutinously.)

Armitage’s good fortune had now extended to the acquisition of a job with good pay, room and board, with no character references required. He therefore should have felt content, and even lucky. And yet the first week at Doctor Snoke’s house dragged by with a paradoxical mixture of nerves and tedium. He did not see Doctor Snoke again, nor did Ben offer further instructions.

Each day Armitage woke when it was still dark, sometimes by himself and sometimes to the muted sound of Ben—presumably, hopefully Ben—scratching at the door. He would dress and navigate the dark corridors to the cavernous, tiled kitchen. He would sit at a table by the fire with Ben and eat. Ben was the closest thing to a colleague that Armitage had, and even so it was strange to think of him as ‘Ben’. Sullen as he was, he became almost welcome company when the alternative was long hours of solitude. He was not pleasant, in fact, he was barely civil. Neither was he very competent.

Ben was but a little taller than Armitage and they were about of an age. But Ben was dark where Armitage was red-haired, and he made almost two of Armitage. He had big rough hands and heavy shoulders and a wide, thick chest. Armitage found himself discomfited by the whole, a feeling not mitigated by Ben’s strange-featured face, which on a woman one would call jolie laide.

‘Are you quite alone here?’ Armitage asked one morning. The question sounded much ruder once it was out in the open. ‘Apart from the doctor, of course.’

‘I’m always alone,’ said Ben, and an awful, hollow facsimile of a smile cracked his face for a moment. Armitage was discomfited by it. He had not expected that response, nor the uncanny way Ben’s rictus smile had bisected his scar.

‘Family, back home?’ Armitage kept going, against all courtesy—after all, Ben had responded.

‘No.’ Ben stirred his porridge around and took a messy bite. He sucked his lower lip after he swallowed. Armitage looked down into his bowl and scraped the last oats into a neat round pile. He did not want to eat them yet. As soon as they finished their breakfast, Ben would snatch up the bowls and Armitage would leave for the study and his copying.

‘Did you fight? I mean—’ Here Armitage broke off because his question was obvious.

‘Yes,’ Ben said shortly. ‘All the men in my family did.’

‘So your father—’

‘I don’t care to talk about it.’ Then Ben rested one elbow in the back of his chair and leaned ostentatiously sideways. ‘Did you?’

‘Fight?’ Armitage stammered, buying himself time but already reddening. Of course the American boy could ask whatever he wanted, now that Armitage had so rudely questioned him.

‘Yeah.’

‘No,’ said Armitage.

‘Didn’t think so, with that gimpy leg,’ Ben said casually, as if he weren’t committing some act of cruelty.

‘I would have,’ said Armitage in a weak voice. Weak, for he had thought about this many times, pictured himself tucked into the cockpit of Harold’s Hawker Tempest with all the rattle and hum and chatter of gunfire about him. He was not sure, ultimately, if he could have fought.

In the end, he supposed, the question was moot. He was fortunate (always fortunate, lucky little Armie) that he had never had to find out the true limits of his courage.

 

* * *

 

Come the end of the first month, the unnerving feeling of always being watched in the old house at not abated one bit. Still, Armitage had left and returned twice now, and after the mausoleum his parents’ house had become, coming back was almost a relief. It was yet more relieving to know that he could leave. That the house would allow it.

By now it felt familiar to come down to the kitchen after his day of work and sit with Ben, and eat the boy’s plodding attempts at food. They did not always speak, nor were their conversations always pleasant. Ben was a wretchedly bad-tempered boy, snappish and sullen by turns. Tonight was no different.

The silence between Armitage and Ben was stifling. Only the clink of metal on crockery could be heard. Ben did not appear to chew his food, and he ate with his elbows on the table. After a time, movement caught Armitage’s eye. A large spider was slowly creeping down from the ceiling on a long line of silk. He watch it come down and down. His fork hovered in mid-air.

Suddenly, Ben’s hand whipped out and slapped the spider into a wet, brown smear on the table. Armitage jumped and his fork clattered onto his plate, spattering his shirt with gravy.

‘For Christ’s sake,’ he burst out. Ben gave him the same sullen look he always had.

‘I don’t like spiders,’ he said, and then he looked at Armitage’s shirt. ‘You should change that for tomorrow. Doctor Snoke doesn’t appreciate slovenliness.’

Armitage bit back an insulting comment. The American’s greasy hair and scuffed shoes had been glaringly obvious since first they met.

‘I only have one spare shirt,’ said Armitage coldly. At least, one good one. He pulled the stained fabric away from his body, hoping that his undershirt was not also damaged. Ben gave him a long look. Something of Armitage’s despair must have showed in his posture, for Ben leaped up with one of his uncanny bursts of speed.

‘Give it me,’ he said.

‘Give you what?’

‘The shirt.’ Ben stretched out one thick-fingered hand. He snapped his fingers. Armitage sat and looked up at him, baffled. ‘I’ll wash it, if you’re mad.’

‘I’m quite sane, thank you.’

‘If you’re angry,’ Ben translated.

‘Oh,’ said Armitage. His hands fluttered nervously at his chest, shy. Then he thought about having to go to Howarth’s and request shirts, while Mr Howarth assessed his thin, off-kilter frame. He unbuttoned his shirt then, trying to ignore Ben’s gaze, suddenly curious, upon him.

After years of wear his undershirt was a little grey, and it made him feel ashamed. More ashamed yet of his size, his lack of size. But Ben said nothing. He just snatched up Armitage’s shirt and took it away into a tiled side room down three narrow stairs, from whence soon came the hollow sound of wood on ceramic, and of water pouring from a bucket.

Armitage hovered in the kitchen. He was rapidly becoming cold, and the indignity of standing in his undershirt was unappealing. Although he knew well that there was nobody else to see him in the house, still he felt strange walking back to his room. Some of that was his state of undress, but Ben's eyes on his body had unsettled him in a way he had not been expecting. He had felt a strange, electric pull towards the American boy today. This was new. It would be hard to call Ben handsome with that nose, his scarred cheek notwithstanding, and yet—and yet he had a strong body, and an indomitable sort of will, and Armitage recognised that Ben had known suffering, too. Personal suffering. Of course everyone had suffered in the war. Everyone had known death somehow.

Yet there had long been a darkness in Armitage that his parents had only ever obliquely remarked on. The ugliness in his soul that he had always known about, that caused him such twisting pains of jealousy and bitterness and control... that had nothing to do with aeroplanes and bombs and raids, not a bit. That was a different brand of suffering. Ben would know this, if Armitage opened his mouth and said it out loud. He would recognise it. Perhaps Ben had noticed this confluence of character as well. Perhaps that was why he had stared so. Armitage pushed open the door to his room and fetched a clean shirt. His hands were very cold as he did up the buttons, but inside he felt unusually warm. He could feel the blood rushing and pulsing in his throat. He knew he would get little work done today.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, guys, I finally finished this! I scrapped three possible endings before I found one I liked. I hope you enjoy this as we head into autumn and... dare I say it... Halloween...

The next morning, Armitage's shirt was hanging on the outside of his door, pressed and unstained. He had remarked the quality of Ben's laundering before, but if possible the shirt was even crisper and brighter than previously. A loose button on the lower hem had been resewn, and again Armitage felt a frisson of intrigue. He went down to the kitchen. His step was lighter than usual. Even his foot seemed to bother him less today.

When he took himself down the two stone steps into the flagstoned kitchen, all was quiet. Ben was not standing at the range as usual. Armitage looked around him. On the table was a covered pot and a note, which Armitage picked up and read.

 _On an errand_ , it read, in a scruffy, ink-smudged hand. _Back tomorrow morning_. His breakfast porridge was almost cold and he had to make himself some tea, struggling with the heavy, cast iron kettle. And in the pot on the stove, a heavy stew, presumably lunch and dinner.

Odd that Ben had not stirred himself to say anything yesterday. Odd that there was no mention of what the errand was. What kind of unexpected task took a whole day. Disgruntled and still rather hungry, Armitage retreated to the study and sat down to work. As every day, his desk had been rearranged overnight. His completed papers were removed, the rubbish basket emptied and fresh paper left for him. The leather book from which he copied reappeared every morning with new pages completed. This chilled Armitage; he felt always as though eyes were upon him and his work being minutely tracked as though he were producing shells in a factory.

No sooner had Armitage seated himself and filled the reservoir of his pen, it began to rain outside. The wind picked up too, and its low howl made Armitage's hackles stand up. The window rattled a little in its frame. It was not the first time that there had been a storm here. The old house did not take kindly to the battering; it creaked and groaned around Armitage in the most alarming way. He was very aware that today he was all but alone.

Alone, perhaps, except for Doctor Snoke. That did not seem a comforting thought.

He tried to do his work, focusing as hard as he could on each of the unearthly, made-up words. There had been no complaints about his penmanship or the accuracy of his copying, and he did not intend to become careless now. It was only a storm. It was only the wind and rain and thunder. The shrieking noises were just the whipping of the trees. The groans were just the house. If they sounded human, that was only his imagination making it so. He must not be cowardly. He kept writing, until one particularly uncanny squeal made him jump, his pen sputtering across the page and marring the work. He cursed, and set his pen down.

Jumping to his feet, Armitage went to the window and cracked one of the shutters open. Outside, all the world was wet and grey. In the middle distance, trees arched and sagged with gusts of wind. The street was empty, all the other houses shut up tight. He could see here and there a little crack of light through shutters, where some woman sat at home and sewed, or a girl in the kitchen boiled water. There were no tradesmen out today knocking on doors, nor a horse or automobile in sight. Water pooled between the cobblestones and rushed down the narrow gutters.

A crash somewhere in the house. Armitage let the shutter go with a bang, jumped again. He spun around, expecting the door to open. Why, he did not know. He expected some horror. He was frozen, but he made himself move. Harold would have moved. He always did. Whenever Armitage was scared as a child, Harold would be the one to leap out of bed and throw open the nursery cupboard door, to show that there was nothing there. Or to brandish a candle under the bed to prove the absence of monsters. Armitage snatched up a poker from the fireplace and advanced towards the door, holding his weapon out in front of him.

To whip open the door was the hardest part. He did it all in a rush, to get it over with. It was almost surprising to see nothing but the drab, empty hallway. He stepped out, poker high. He had some notion of searching the house. He took a slow walk around the ground floor, passing nothing but closed doors. Away from the windows, the wind and rain were quieter. The kitchen and scullery were cold and empty, and the door leading upstairs from the old servants' quarters was locked as always. Armitage kept walking. At the stairs to the basement, he paused. This was Doctor Snoke's demesne.

He took a cautious step down, listening hard. The narrow staircase, low-ceiled, forced him to hunch over. His footfalls were almost silent on the old carpet, which was a relief, until Armitage realised that he would not hear anybody else walking around either. He kept turning to look behind him, but nothing was ever there. Every creak and crack of the house perturbed him, and there were many this low down in the building.  
After two turns down the narrow hallways, Armitage realised that he was outside Doctor Snoke’s door. He froze. Then he leaned in, putting his ear close to the door. A groan came from inside. Deep and long, barely human. It did not sound like the Doctor. It did not sound like anything but pain. Armitage’s courage failed him and he fled back up the stairs. He was back inside the study with the heavy door closed before he realised that he had dropped the poker somewhere.

His day did not pass easily and neither did his night.

 

* * *

 

Ben was extremely pale the next day, with his dark eyes showing even darker than usual in his face like thumbprints in snow. When he set tea and porridge in front of Armitage, the tea slopped carelessly onto the table. It was as weak and pale as Ben himself. In fact, his hands were shaking. Ben did not seem disturbed, which in itself was disturbing.

‘Are you ill?’ Armitage asked, stirring his porridge.

‘No,’ Ben replied curtly. He turned away to the sink to scrub the porridge pot. Armitage persisted, feeling brave—perhaps it was the full moon infecting him with some kind of mania, like his strange aunt about whom the family never spoke.

‘Only, I notice you look very pale.’

‘I work hard,’ Ben said, in a tone that suggested that Armitage did not. He upturned the porridge pot and set it to drain with an almighty clang. Armitage jumped a little and tried to hide it. He had been out of sorts since yesterday, still on edge. ‘Anyway,’ Ben continued, sitting down to inhale his own porridge, ‘you don’t look too hot yourself.’

‘I didn’t sleep well.’ Or at all, in fact.

‘The storm was loud,’ Ben said in between mouthfuls.

‘It was.’

‘Kept me awake, too.’ Armitage sat very still and ate his porridge without looking at Ben, because this rare piece of volunteered information might be followed by another if he was careful. He looked at Ben through his lashes as he ate, surreptitiously.

‘Thank you for laundering my shirt,’ he eventually said, trying not to sound prim. Ben nodded, but said nothing. After they had finished eating, Armitage found that he wanted to do something for Ben. He was not usually invested in reciprocating kind gestures although, in fact, he was not accustomed to receiving kindnesses, however small. He stood with Ben to gather the plates together, and followed along into the scullery. Ben poured off some hot water from the kettle into the stone sink, and added cold water and soap flakes. Casting about him, Armitage found a clean cloth, and he carefully wiped the plates and the pot dry after Ben washed them.

In the cool, quiet room, Armitage listened to the water in the sink drain away, and the sound of Ben’s breathing. They stood so close together that he could feel the heat radiating from Ben. He could not tell whether he reached out first, but in a sudden rustle of clothing Armitage found himself pressed against the wall with Ben’s bulk close to him and his big hands on Armitage’s waist.

‘You’re—very kind,’ Ben said thickly, his breath hot and sweet with the smell of milk and jam. Armitage had never been called kind in his life before, and he said as much. Without argument, Ben kissed him, and every nerve in Armitage body flared to life at the same time. He had never been kissed before, or held like this. His fingers gripped Ben’s strong forearms, and he allowed Ben free access to his person without question.

At some point in his childhood, the indecency of self-abuse had been indicated to Armitage, since which hazy time he had tried to ignore any stirrings of arousal. And yet, Ben was very clearly excited, pressing himself up against Armitage in a way that could not be ignored. Armitage felt his body respond, and thrilled with the feeling of another warm body rubbing against him. First it was Ben’s crotch, and then one of his big hands pawing at Armitage’s trousers. He had some trouble with the buttons, and the slide of his tongue in Armitage’s mouth became unsteady. Then Ben was touching Armitage skin to skin, and Armitage made a sound; he could not help it.

What they were doing was wicked, but Armitage had no will power available to him. He told himself that he was letting it happen. In fact his hands were gripping Ben’s arms very tightly and pulling him closer, and he was arching and pushing into Ben’s hand. Ben groaned, and Armitage forgot to feel guilt. For a blissful moment he was light and electric, and his whole body rippled strangely and, at his peak, he spent himself into Ben’s hand. Ben groaned again and his weight was suddenly oppressive and crushing, and he made some great heaving motions and gasped, and fell still.

Armitage could hear his heartbeat in his ears, hammering away. They peeled away from each other, sticky and sweating; Ben’s face along his hairline was wet, and he was flushed. With a guilty look towards the door, Armitage turned away from Ben to take up the dish cloth and dab at himself frenetically. Even when could see no evidence of their coupling, he felt exposed.

Ben reached out and touched him between his shoulders, and Armitage uncurled like a flower, and looked behind him at Ben’s grateful face. There was an honesty in his expression now. Perhaps they knew each other better.

‘You’ll be late,’ Ben said gently, as though Armitage had someone to watch him arrive at his work. ‘But I’ll see you at dinner.’ He smiled.

 _How lonely must he be,_ Armitage thought to himself as he left the kitchen, _that my company is so welcome?_

 

* * *

 

‘Doctor Snoke wants to talk to you,’ said Ben later that week at supper, without any preamble. He served up a pair of glistening, white boiled potatoes as he spoke. They slid about on Armitage’s plate like oversized eyeballs.

‘About what?’ Armitage asked, crushing the potatoes with the back of his fork and adding gravy to hide them.

‘Didn’t tell me,’ Ben said, prickly as he had not been since their encounter in the scullery. The encounter had been repeated twice. Ben’s good humours had been pleasant, but apparently he was regressing.

‘Should I go now?’ Armitage’s fork hovered in midair.

‘After supper, I suppose,’ Ben said, as though he did not care at all, when it was very clear that he did. The meal tasted even less appetising than usual, and Armitage had to choke it down past a feeling that was like guilt, but hurt more. He fled as soon as he was able, only pausing on his way to the basement to smooth his hair down in his reflection in a window, and to dab at his mouth with his handkerchief.

‘Armitage,’ said Doctor Snoke, turning his chair. The metal wheels squeaked slightly. Armitage stood at stiff attention in the centre of the carpet. Without Ben present, he felt both uncertain and as though he was lying to Ben somehow. ‘Armitage,’ said the doctor again, savouring the word. ‘It has been… three months. I am pleased with your work.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Armitage cautiously. The doctor seemed not to speak like a normal person; his sentences came together in strange fragments. His voice sounded like a creaking door, or an old leather bellows exhaling dusty sounds.

‘Yes, I am pleased.’ The doctor’s face spasmed and his neck flinched so that his right shoulder and chin came together briefly. Some sort of muscular pain. ‘You have noticed that Ben, my faithful servant, is not altogether well.’

‘He is often pale and tired,’ said Armitage.

‘He is a good boy. He will not always be able to serve me. I see that. I see also that you are conscientious in your work.’ A cart rumbled by outside, and the doctor paused until the rattle of its wheels receded into the distance. ‘Be attentive, Armitage, and I may have other work for you in the future.’

‘I try to do my duty, sir.’ The words tasted bitter on his tongue. The doctor was making no attempt at subtlety. He was offering Ben’s employment to Armitage, in private. Armitage wondered if Ben knew that his wasting sickness would be the end of him here. Perhaps the end of him altogether. For Ben’s allegiance had the ring of zealotry to it, and Armitage could not imagine him anywhere else. He felt sick. He felt sick to his stomach for the rest of his brief interview. A grasping, greedy, unpleasant boy, he was, as had always been suspected of him.

 

* * *

 

‘Now look here,’ Armitage said all in a rush as he came into breakfast the next morning. If he did not say it now, he would not say it at all. ‘I think the Doctor is planning to replace you.’ Ben spun around from the stove with a grace and speed that could hardly be believed, given his great size.

‘What?’ His scarred face was hideous in its anger. Armitage put his hands up and made a soothing gesture.

‘Well, he implied it bloody hard yesterday. Said that you wouldn’t always be able to serve him.’

‘Impossible,’ Ben muttered. Then, cryptically and almost inaudibly under his breath, ‘He hasn’t the life force to waste. He hasn’t the time to replace me.’

‘Still,’ said Armitage.

‘He’s got nobody else,’ said Ben. He had started to pace. ‘Isn’t anyone can do what I do for him.’ He stared straight across at Armitage, who was shocked by the fervour burning in Ben’s dark eyes. ‘I’m special to him,’ he said.

‘I’m sure you are. He puts a lot of trust in you.’

‘What about you?’ Ben suddenly demanded. ‘Was that the first time he summoned you? What did he say to you?’

‘It was the first time,’ Armitage said, ‘and I told you—he said that you wouldn’t always be able to serve him. He seemed concerned about you.’ He very carefully did not say that Snoke had implied, with little subtlety, that Armitage was next in line. Nor did he follow this with the comment that he would sooner not be trapped in this strange house forever, or that the notion of skivvying for a strange old recluse was a mighty sight less appealing than doing monotonous and impenetrable copying.

‘I’m special to him,’ Ben said again, defiantly this time. He looked strange and incandescent with fervour.

‘I’m sure that’s true,’ Armitage said.

‘I am,’ Ben said urgently. ‘I’ve particular business with him tonight. He needs me specially.’ He said ‘specially’ like a child, placing great emphasis on it. It was a little pathetic. Armitage looked down at his breakfast bowl. Ben repeated himself. ‘ _Particular_ business.’ Armitage could not imagine what particular business the doctor might need, and he did not care to speculate when Ben was being so singularly unpleasant. He hurried down his breakfast and retired to the study, where he copied at tedious length for hours.

Ben was nowhere to be found at lunchtime, but there was a covered plate on the kitchen table. Nor was Ben in the kitchen at dinner and, strangely, there was no sign that he had been cooking. Armitage went into the pantry and found himself bread and a jar of dripping, which he ate standing. The house grew darker and darker, and Ben was not there to light lamps, so the lamps stayed unlit. Again in Armitage grew the oppressive sense of wrongness about the house, which was always there but which he had grown accustomed to. It swelled in him until his neck hair prickled alive. The kitchen was one of the least strange places in the house, so he stayed there for a while, waiting.

Presently it became clear that Ben was not about. His _particular business_ , the Lord knew what, was keeping him. Armitage wondered whether Ben was punishing him with his absence, for it was obvious that Doctor Snoke’s interest in Armitage had aroused in Ben a powerful jealousy. Armitage himself had no desire to compete for the Doctor’s attentions or affections, whatever obscure emotions they might be, but he was very desirous of continuing on good terms with Ben, whose pleasant moods made the house more bearable than Armitage’s salary could.

He left the kitchen, following the corridors to his bedroom. As he turned the corner, he heard a rhythmic thudding from the basement. It was a dull sound, repetitive, like a mallet striking a post, or a beater on a dusty carpet. Armitage hesitated. He had not forgotten the horror of the basement in the storm. And yet; he was so tired of his own cowardice.

He took three tremulous steps towards the noise and hesitated again. Then he steeled himself and marched down the corridor to the basement door. It creaked open, moving lightly in his hand. The banging grew louder as he made his careful way down the basement steps. Some of the thumps were louder than others. They were becoming more irregular, gradually. Armitage navigated the narrow hallway, following the sound, until he came to Doctor Snoke’s door.

With his hand outstretched towards the doorknob, he froze. Arising in him was sick swell of fear, and the certainty that what was happening in the room was not something that would be easily forgotten. The thumps were very soft now, and came very infrequently. Armitage thought he could hear the scrape of something along the carpet. There was trouble in the room. There was a terrible trouble. And yet, Armitage thought of his brother and turned the doorknob, breathing high and fast in the top of his chest.

The sight inside almost made him cry out.

Armitage looked in horror at Doctor Snoke hunched over Ben’s limp body. One of Ben’s big hands was flung out to the side and lay upward on the carpet like a dying, white spider. And dying was what Ben was doing. One of his big feet twitched on the floor; a soft sound, a scrape. Of course Armitage had heard the stories of how men died in the war, but it all sounded rather animated and gory. This was not the same; Ben twitched once or twice, his eyes staring vacantly at the ceiling and his mouth open, and then he exhaled in a rattling gasp and everything went very limp. Doctor Snoke made a disgusting slurping noise and his curled-in back started slowly to straighten. A cracking sound; Armitage watched his neck pop backwards, out of its former dowager’s hump. His skin tone fleshed out again from grey to pink.

Some reverse transformation was happening. Although it was too inconceivable to imagine it, Armitage could see the truth: Snoke’s body was feeding off of Ben’s life. He knew now that if Snoke turned around, the gash across his face would no doubt be sealing itself closed. And Ben’s scar was ripped open again. It was raw and oozing a dark, unnatural blood. It soaked into the carpet. It smelled of metal and rot.

No doubt Armitage had already made some sound that would give him away. He should do something now, while the creature still had his back turned. In the stories he would do something. He did not. He lived up to the nonexistent potential that had always been predicted; he turned, he fled. He knew that his feet were too loud even on the carpet, and that the squeaking of the stairs had already alerted the creature.

He bolted through the house, without stopping to gather his possessions. With every step he felt that he could feel Snoke pursuing him. The phantom sensation of those cold, hard fingers at his throat spurred him towards the front door. He reached it, dragged at it, pulled it open although the ankle of his bad foot rolled outwards and made him cry out with pain. And he fled into the street, into the cold, wet night, as if Hell itself had opened up behind him.

 

* * *

 

The seasons changed and gossip about the old stone house came and receded, but still Armitage experienced a horrible kind of tremor whenever he walked past its facade. He got into the habit of walking home a different way, and never thinking about the place, although sometimes when he saw a similar house he would feel a swell of horror ooze from his stomach up his throat, and his mouth would taste acidic. Occasionally someone local would dredge up a story, and the rumours would start again. In those days and weeks, Armitage would avoid casual conversation in the local shop or post office. He counted himself lucky. He counted his blessings. He never spoke of the old stone house, lest it bring misfortune back into his life. He moved on.

Or, he thought he did. One day, passing by the grocer with his eyes fixed ahead of him, he saw out of the corner of his eye someone who could be Ben. No; he saw Ben. He turned to look across the road, and watched a pair of broad shoulders disappear around the corner. Crossing the road at a run, heedless of traffic, Armitage followed, but by the time he got to the place where he had seen the figure, there was nobody around.

The visitation so shook Armitage that his habits of months began to change. He found himself making excuses to walk closer and closer to Doctor Snoke’s old house, although at first he did not walk down the street. Once more he saw an almost-Ben, but could not catch him. The pendulum of his thoughts swung first towards finding Ben, and then back towards the desire to forget everything about the strange man and the strange house. Armitage knew that he must not do anything lunatic. Already he had found another job; writing orders in a shipping warehouse. It was very poor work, and his digs damp and cold, but it was all he had.

He tried therefore to act as though all were as it should be. And yet; a week would pass, and he would find himself back at the house, walking past it briskly and trying not to look at it. When he was within a few metres of the house, every nerve and fibre in his being sang with a resonance that was palpable. The house—called him. It tugged at him.

And abruptly Armitage woke in his own narrow bed, with the house’s decaying portal creaking open in his mind’s eye. He reached out and touched it. He was there again. It felt real; it was real. He fled, running in an awkward, lurching limp. His fingers ached from writing and they were inkstained, but he could not recall going to work that day.

He got up and pulled on his coat. It was autumn, still. It had just been winter. It was autumn, again. He left his digs and turned right at the end of the road, away from the old house. He turned another corner and it was there, empty windows like dead eyes. Resolving not to cross the road to go near it, he reached out and touched the door, and awoke with a start in his own bed. He was still wearing his boots. Wet leaves clung to the counterpane.

Armitage kicked the leaves off against the stone steps of the house, and reached out to touch the door, and touched—

—wet wood, and the smell of rain in the air. He turned and ran home. He ran, he ran around the corner and he—

—reached for the doorhandle and—

—he woke, gasping for breath, and sweating in his clothes, and he—

—reached for the doorhandle and—

—and he—

—woke.

 

* * *

 

‘There you are, Armitage,’ said Doctor Snoke in his dry, crumbling voice. Armitage closed the study door carefully behind him and brought the tea tray across the room. He set it down carefully on the desk. It was very kind that the Doctor did not remark on his lateness.

‘Two cups, Doctor?’ he asked.

‘Yes, my boy,’ said Doctor Snoke. ‘And show the new clerk down to my study.’

‘At once,’ Armitage said. And he turned, and reached for the doorhandle.


End file.
